Washington Slagbaai National Park - FLORA

If you visit Bonaire during the rainy season, you will be amazed by how green the island look, but if you come during the dry season learning and observing the different survival strategies of our flora in order to survive in this harsh environment can still amaze you. If you are very lucky, you will visit us at the very end of the dry season and observe the incredible bloom of leaves and flowers after just one tropical shower.

We will explain below, in more detail, some of these adaptations for survival, but as a general rule, our vegetation has to do in three months what most plants do in one year (grow leaves, flowers and seeds) and then "die" for the rest of the year.

Agave

As the annual rainfall on Bonaire amounts to only about 532 mm per year, plant-growth is adapted to this very unfavorable condition. Also, there are only one or two months during the year in which rainfall exceeds evaporation, consequently the vegetation suffers from drought the greatest part of their life. These conditions are expressed in the high number of annuals (plants that complete their life-cycle within the three months of the rainy season).

The flora comprises about 340 species, it is rather peculiar that in Bonaire many of the plant families (about 40%) are represented by a single species only. The plant life resembles the flora of the Caribbean islands, rather than that of the northern continental South America.

Some characteristics associated with a dry environment are:

1) Deciduousness: the complete of partial shedding of leaves at a definite season of the year;
2) Leaf thickening: the leaf is either thickened and fleshy, or thin and brittle; the upper leaf surface is covered by a shiny wax layer;
3) Water-storing tissue: a thin wax cover combined with water storing tissue in leaves and stems, is found in plants such as cactus and agaves;
4) Thorniness: it is not clear how this characteristic assists the plant to survive better in the given habitat, but it is associated with a dry environment, and thus must be a response to it.

Candle Cactus

Vegetation on Bonaire has suffered from the voracity of the thousands of half-wild goats and a smaller number of donkeys running over the island, and by consequent prevention of rejuvenation, where the vegetation has been strongly affected, a secondary plant cover has developed. An impoverished vegetation is also found along the windward coast as a result of the strong, constant and salty trade winds. Also, the native flora has to compete against exotic species brought by men for different purposes like agriculture and ornamentation.